Back on the west ridge of Uruashraju Norte
The subsidiary peak of Uruashraju Norte is in the background.
After a successful climb of Uruashraju itself, it's almost all downhill from here. The only technical difficulty is in getting down the north flank of this ridge, on the left in this picture. On our ascent, we had gained this ridge further down to the west, and then scrambled up along it for a while.
The scramble wasn't difficult, but the ridge was quite exposed. This time, we decided to look for a shorter and faster way down. We descended the north side, until at one point, some 10-15m before we would be on the gentler slopes of the glacier, the rock got steep. With crampons, I was reluctant to downclimb it, so we rappelled instead.
19 July 2011.